[The Machine Stops, The Celestial Omnibus, and Other Stories] [By: Forster, E M] [October, 2013]

by E.M. Forster

The Machine Stops, The Celestial Omnibus, and Other Stories is a collection of short stories from E. M. Forster, who is perhaps best known for his novels Howards End and A Room with a View. Included in the collection is The Machine Stops, a science fiction story that predicted the internet, video conferencing, and instant messaging. Forster, who deplored science fiction, wrote the story in response to an optimistic depiction of the future by H. G. Wells. The story is one of the earliest examples of dystopian science fiction. Also included is The Story of a Panic, the first story Forster ever wrote.

Genres: Short Stories, Fiction, Science Fiction

Paperback

First published October 13, 2013

About the author

Edward Morgan Forster, generally published as E.M. Forster, was an English novelist, essayist, and short story writer. He is known best for his ironic and well-plotted novels examining class difference and hypocrisy in early 20th-century British society. His humanistic impulse toward understanding and sympathy may be aptly summed up in the epigraph to his 1910 novel Howards End: "Only connect".

He had five novels published in his lifetime, achieving his greatest success with A Passage to India (1924) which takes as its subject the relationship between East and West, seen through the lens of India in the later days of the British Raj.

Forster's views as a secular humanist are at the heart of his work, which often depicts the pursuit of personal connections in spite of the restrictions of contemporary society. He is noted for his use of symbolism as a technique in his novels, and he has been criticised for his attachment to mysticism. His other works include Where Angels Fear to Tread (1905), The Longest Journey (1907), A Room with a View (1908) and Maurice (1971), his posthumously published novel which tells of the coming of age of an explicitly gay male character.

Reviews

[Jessica · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Much of this, remarkably, was envisaged by E. M. Forster in his 1909 story “The Machine Stops,” in which he imagined a future where people live underground in isolated cells, never seeing one another and communicating only by audio and visual devices. In this world, original thought and direct observation are discouraged—“Beware of first-hand ideas!” people are told. Humanity has been overtaken by “the Machine,” which provides all comforts and meets all needs—except the need for human contact. One young man, Kuno, pleads with his mother via a Skype-like technology, “I want to see you not through the Machine. . . . I want to speak to you not through the wearisome Machine.”

He says to his mother, who is absorbed in her hectic, meaningless life, “We have lost the sense of space. . . . We have lost a part of ourselves. . . . Cannot you see . . . that it is we that are dying, and that down here the only thing that really lives is the Machine?”

[Cal · Rating 2 out of 5]

I wanted to love this little collection. However, much like the 2 star rating suggests, it was just ok. The two stories advertised on the cover were probably the best stories, and in fairness I purchased this after hearing about The Machine Stops.

I found myself "reading" this book but not actually taking in what I was reading quite a few times which I believe is a sign of disinterest. It was a struggle to get through some of the stories. Probably an acquired taste that I just didn't care to get into. Maybe if it had been the only book I was currently reading, things would've gone better, but it wasn't, and they didn't.

[Rebecca · Rating 3 out of 5]

So I am going to put my biases here upfront to put my review in context: I do not like E.M. Forster, have never liked E.M. Forster, and probably will never like E.M. Forster. He's just not my jam.

I picked up this book specifically because I wanted to read "The Machine Stops", at my manager's suggestion after a discussion about dystopian stories. The other stories in this collection... well... I read them, because they were there.

Thoughts on "The Machine Stops" ... it was okay? It was pleasantly weird reading a futuristic dystopian short story from an author who normally writes about insufferable upper-class British people. This story was pitched to me after I complained about how much I dislike the Metaverse and compared it to the sad interactive TVs of Fahrenheit 451. He noted the people in this story interact solely via what sounds quite a bit like Zoom.

The people in this short story live tiny, isolated, self-absorbed lives, where technology has obviated any need to interact with one another or with their environment. For as obsessed as this society is with "ideas", the inhabitants of this society seem empty, selfish, and lacking in curiosity. I would describe it as a commentary on what you give up more generally when you rely too heavily on machines and have instant gratification. People have forgotten how to enjoy nature and to be curious about the world around them, because they can get instant gratification at their fingertips, without doing a thing.

I felt frustrated by this story, though, and I think it might be be because I read it expecting a commentary on technology's ability to socially isolate, when in fact it was more of a commentary on overreliance on technology. Consequently, I was hoping he would explore the resulting shallow social ties or loneliness. Instead, he instead focused on people's lack of curiosity and low tolerance for inconveniences. I guess I just didn't relate to that as much? Excessive hedonism isn't really something I worry about too much.

I think I struggled a little fully engaging with the story because some of what made it dystopian didn't feel terribly realistic. For instance, I can't imagine in what world people would opt for perpetual night over perpetual day-time. There were other small instances like that where I felt like I had to suspend belief, but couldn't actually see it happening, no matter how advanced technology gets. The best dystopian stories are ones where you can be like, "yep, I can totally see that happening, and that's really scary."

As for the other stories: I really liked "The Celestial Omnibus". It reminded me of the magic of childhood. The other stories ranged from just okay ("The Other Side of the Hedge", "The Road From Colonus", and "The Curate's Friend") to eyeroll ("The Story of Panic") to pure drudgery I was desperately counting the pages to finish ("Other Kingdom").

This particular book had the strangest editing of any book I've ever read. Many back-and-forth dialogues were not spaced apart; one, two, or four dashes were used for interjections; presumably italicized words were instead flanked by underscores. It was really weird! I wouldn't recommend buying this particular book from this publisher.

[James Easterson · Rating 4 out of 5]

I am writing this after reading the main story of this collection "The Machine Stops". Although this edition has many editing errors in it, and the story itself to me does not seem particularly well written, there are a few fascinating things about it. First, this was written in 1909, and thus an early attempt at science fiction. Secondly, the beginning pages foresees Facebook, instant messaging, and the internet. And although this book carries the now common theme of many dystopian stories of handing your individuality and humanity over to a machine, the internet, Facebook, religion, or whatever, for me it also hits home in the fact that I think humankind's end will come through the failure of our own infrastructure; be it electricity, water, transportation, the internet, food, government, or anything we have come to depend on rather too much. In some ways we are living this book.

[Sandra · Rating 3 out of 5]

I heard about the story The Machine Stops and that's why I bought this. That story is about an uninhabitable earth and people living in individual pods in a structure like a bee hive. Communication is frequent but mainly electronic. Amazing stuff for the beginning of the 20th century. All of the stories are quirky - The Celestial Omnibus has a rather soulful quality - some are just a little too strange. Some aspects of the stories remind me of the collection Jizzle by John Wyndham although Wyndham's stories are much more polished. These seemed like rather early examples of writing by the author of A Passage to India. About this edition: as I read in another review, the typeset is pretty bad and the spelling errors are insane sometimes.

[James · Rating 4 out of 5]

Well what an interesting and good mix of stories by E M Forster. Being short stories there are some books that miss the mark, mainly because the stories are too short to really judge.

Having initially read A Passage to India and A Room with a View, I have given this book a 4 Star Rating because it really shows the versatility of E M Forster and his writing style; especially for the futuristic dystopian books.

[Vivian Witkind · Rating 5 out of 5]

E.M Forster wrote The Machine Stops in 1909. Each human being lives their entire life in an individual hexagonal domicile underground. The Machine takes care of them. Do you watch TV instead of going out? Do you zoom with your friends instead of seeing them? Do you rely on DoorDash to drop off your meals? Are you worried about AI?

[Becky · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Machine Stops is far and away one of my favourite short stories. A depressingly prescient story, it's great.
The general theme among the collection is death and mythology (spoilers?). All in a very self-deprecating english way

[Beth · Rating 4 out of 5]

Written in 1909, the writing style could use a little work, but EM Forrester painted a picture of 21st century dependency that is amazingly accurate. still worth reading, at least twice. The Machine Stops.

[Graham Clark · Rating 3 out of 5]

The first two stories are good, the rest haven't aged that well.

[Hannah Rehman · Rating 4 out of 5]

as always, i love a collection of shorts stories!

also, it kinda makes me want to go through the hedge (if you know, you know).

[Benjamin Wallin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Man the Machine Stops predicts the iPhone's control over our minds.

[Bbrown · Rating 4 out of 5]

A note before getting to the contents themselves: don't buy this edition. All of the works contained in this book are public domain and so you can find them online for free, and this edition is so rife with errors that spending money on it really isn't warranted. Even if you're the type that greatly prefers a physical copy of a book, you're better off looking for one that's been better edited.

On to the stories themselves. This book combines Forster's short story collection The Celestial Omnibus and Other Stories with what is probably his most famous short work, The Machine Stops. The former is a mixed bag, but showcases Forster's range as a writer as well as his imagination. The latter is excellent, a science fiction story with a level of prescience unmatched by any other book I've read in the genre. Both are worth reading, if for no other reason than to demonstrate that Forster wasn't so straight-laced and by-the-numbers writer as his longer works would lead you to believe.

In The Celestial Omnibus and Other Stories Forster gives us several tales with at least an element of the fantastic, with a few left open to interpretation. The Story of a Panic is a strange beast of a story that leaves the key event ambiguous, and the ending likewise. You can interpret it as a story of fantasy or even a science fiction story if you so choose. The Other Side of the Hedge is a religious allegory that isn't very subtle and that is probably the low point of this collection, but even it isn't bad: just obvious and not particularly memorable. The titular story The Celestial Omnibus captures some of the feeling of childlike wonder despite the protagonist not always reacting in a believably childlike way, and despite the ending it's a story to put a smile on your face. Other Kingdom goes lighter on the fantastic elements than most of the other stories in this collection but still has an ending that strongly suggests a fantastic occurrence. I found it to be the highlight of the collection (not including The Machine Stops). Not only does Other Kingdom establish an interesting cast of characters within only a few pages, but the narrator is an interesting one that isn't a pure observer and isn't a full participant either, his role made the story even more interesting for me. The Curate's Friend again features fantastic occurrences and furthermore brings to the fore aspects of classical Greek fantasy that has appeared in a couple of the previous stories. Finally The Road From Colonus again touches on the fantastic, but in a subtler way, and the ending leaves you questioning what the purpose of the brush with the fantastic was. There's a recurring element throughout these stories of a person stumbling upon (or being stumbled upon by) something that changes their perspective on life, allowing them to perceive things they couldn't before, or in a way they didn't before, but this enlightenment isn't something they are able to share with or explain to others. Their world is transformed, and those around them are incapable of understanding. In an interesting twist, however, this enlightenment is a bad thing as often as not. The shift in perspective comes with new burdens, or brings misfortune (whether that was the enlightener's intention or not is often left for us to question). It's an interesting theme to explore, and one not present in the other Forster works I've read.

The Machine Stops is the longest of the stories included in this thin volume and also my favorite. With this story Forster paints a future with humans dependent on technology, where people don't interact face-to-face anymore, where human imagination and the drives to explore, invent, and progress have atrophied thanks to material comforts. The technological advances Forster foresaw are staggering. Forster presents a dystopia similar to the film Wall-E, except Forster conceived of such a world an entire century before Pixar. Not only does The Machine Stop impress with its prescience, it's also a good story in its own right. Having created a machine to pamper them and take care of their every need, humanity puts itself in the care of the machine. Before long they have lost the original knowledge that went into the machine- it repairs itself, after all, so why bother maintaining an understanding of it- and eventually as the gulf of understanding widens the machine is treated as a divine entity. There are the rare few that try to exist outside of the machine, but the vast majority are complacent. This is the state of the world when the story begins, and although the outcome of such a story is predictable in broad strokes Forster constructs the details masterfully, and on the whole the structure and progression of the story is strong. Having read this, I can't help but wish Forster spent more of his career writing science fiction. Oh well, at least we have The Machine Stops, which I would recommend that everyone with a spare hour or two check out.

[Karen Spence · Rating 3 out of 5]

I didn't find this book particularly well written. I didn't really have an affinity with the characters Vashti and Kuno, however, it is a completely different genre for me so please excuse my ignorance.
I have just reviewed the Machine Stops from the book of short stories. It is rather amazing that at the beginning of the 20th century, Forster was able to imagine a world where humans would be on their own in a hexagonal room and communication was central to that so it seems to me to be possibly one of the first attempts into science fiction. However, there is the eeriness that we see that is reflected on the constant need for social media today and that fascinates me that this man in 1909 had visions of what our world could look like.
This type of take on a dystopian future is prevalent in a lot of modern writing, but I think it will take a few more attempts to have me hooked. I will give Forsters A Room With a View a go and see if that wins me over but at the moment I’m sitting on the fence.

[John · Rating 3 out of 5]

The English writer E. M. Forster is better known for other novels such as A Room With A View and Howard’s End. The Machine Stops (60 pages) is an out-and-out science fiction short story in a rather different style.

First published in 1909, it inevitably betrays its age in some of its linguistic framing, but is to be admired for its remarkable farsighted imagining of a world in a kind of permanent Covid-19 lockdown, living in confined spaces, with numerous automated tools to remove every kind of inconvenience or effort, surrounded by artificial Muzak, rarely venturing outside or travelling in the “old” spaceship-like airplanes, and interacting only via video screens connected by wires “under the sea [and] beneath the roots of the mountains”. This in 1909, the year Blériot first crossed the Channel in a single-seater “balsa-wood airplane” with a 25HP engine; most homes did not yet have electricity; the transatlantic telegraph was only 35 years old; the Model T Ford had only just appeared on American roads the previous year; and, of course, no TV, no computers, no robots, and little attention to the excessive “exploit[ation of] the riches of nature”, pollution or climate change.

The remaining 120 pages or so bring together the rather less interesting The Celestial Omnibus - a satire of literary societies and a hymn to the curiosity of youth - and five other equally ho-hum short stories first published in various magazines around the same time such as The Other Side Of The Hedge, a reinterpretation of the old fable of the tortoise and the hare.

Nevertheless, even these contain the odd philosophical note that will resonate with many readers, particularly if they are in the mood to share E. M. Forster’s slowdown undertone that screams “Stop the world, I want to get off!” It is indirectly summed up the bewildered character who finds himself on The Other Side Of The Hedge saying: “Who can doubt that it’s general tendency is onward? To what goal we know not — it may be to some mountain where we shall touch the Sky, it may be over precipices into the sea”. Who can doubt indeed?!

[Richard B · Rating 4 out of 5]

I am a big fan of Morgan's writing generally and this collection of of short stories and novellas once again does not disappoint. The overarching themes with much of his work are human connection, or a lack there-of and man's loss of reverence and connection with nature. The Machine Stops is a sci-fi novella which has a few prescient touches in it. The other stories all have some supernatural or fantastical element in them and are incredibly enjoyable and full of meaning. This should appeal to a broad swath of readers.

[Paul Taylor · Rating 3 out of 5]

Competent but not exceptional. Surprisingly post modern in approach.

[Liezel · Rating 5 out of 5]

Brilliant. Chilling. These stories are beautifully written, but also eerie in their predictive accuracy. Fast becoming my new favorite author. John Irving, its not you, its me.